On a particularly rocky ferry ride back from our UEFA Cup exit at the hands of Kaiserslautern in November 1999, I said to a couple of my fellow travelling friends that I believed Spurs had made a mistake missing out on the signing of Robbie Keane; Coventry City had recently bought him from Wolves for £6m and Spurs were reportedly interested in him. There was a strong rumour that the then Spurs Manager George Graham felt the price was too high. As I said at the time, I thought he was exactly what we needed, a young, bright goalscorer who could be as potent to us as Michael Owen was to Liverpool at the time.
I kept an eye on Keane and still thought we may be able to get him from Coventry. He scored 12 goals in 31 appearances for Coventry that season, good for him (and my fantasy football team), with the highlight for me being the televised winner he scored against Arsenal on Boxing day which I saw a few hours (and a few beers) after Spurs had won at home earlier that day.
Within a year his price had more than doubled, and Internazionale bought him for £13 million, but a quick change in management meant although he was popular with Inter fans, he was quickly back in England, snapped up by Leeds United, initially on loan. Even in a big first team squad he continued to get his share of goals (and points for my fantasy team), and I thought it was a good bit of business when we finally signed him in August 2002.
And his record in those six seasons of his first spell at Spurs, the longest spell he had at any one club, will stand the test of time. He scored goals with both feet, linked play well and became a leader in a side that has been notoriously lacking leaders in the last two decades. In those six seasons he scored 108 goals in 254 games, a healthy ratio for a player who also offered a lot more to the side.
Some players have a had good goalscoring records in the Premier League in the past, are adored by the media and end up going to Barcelona, but their stats are exaggerated because they were effectively flat-track bullies; the same can’t be said of Keane. Of those goals he scored for Spurs in his first spell, many of them were valuable and in tight games. He put Spurs in the lead at Old Trafford, Anfield and Highbury, scored last minute equalizers at home against both Arsenal and Chelsea – one a great example of bottle, the other a piece of inspirational skill – as well countless decisive goals in both league and cup.
Some of his finest goals for Spurs include the aforementioned equalizer at Chelsea, as well a wonderful first time finish in his early days at White Hart Lane against Leeds, a couple of great individual finishes home and away against Aston Villa, and a clever goal in an important win against Blackburn as Spurs achieved their highest league finish for 16 seasons. In fact he produced many great moments in those six seasons not even reflected in that goalscoring record, including his work from the left side of midfield that produced our first win against Chelsea for 15 years, and a cracking volley in a friendly against Torino.
And if there was one performance that showed his genuine quality in those years, despite all his contributions for the club, it was one at international level, when he ran the game for the Republic of Ireland against a full-strength Dutch team at the Amsterdam Arena in 2004, scoring the only goal, in an individual performance of high class. He is now on 51 goals and counting at International level, an impressive record in itself, that includes goals against Spain and Germany at the World Cup Finals, as well as a goal in a European Championship Play-off against France.
But for all his qualities, Keane won’t be held in completely high regard at Spurs because in 2008 he made a very bad footballing decision; although finally settled at a club where he had just won his first trophy, enjoying his life living in Barnet, and being the main man in the Tottenham dressing-room, his head was turned.
At the time it seemed a bizarre decision for him, joining a Liverpool side already being managed erratically by Rafael Benetiz. Perhaps in the knowledge that Berbatov was determined to go, he also thought it was the time to move; he had said in a past Spurs programme Liverpool were his boyhood club, but by now he should have been a Spurs fan as a man; and either sentiment, or a green eye of greater riches, led him to make a decision from which his club career has never recovered.
Had he used a simple bit of cold-eyed analysis of where he thought he might fit into that Liverpool team, which had Steven Gerrard playing in the hole the previous season, it’s possible he may not have moved. But it obviously wasn’t a question he considered, as watching him at his opening press conference for Liverpool was like passing by the window of the barber’s shop when Samson was having his hair cut. As he was unveiled as the club’s new Number 7, following in the club’s great tradition of Michael Robinson, Harry Kewell and Vladimir Smicer, Benetiz said he could see Keane playing on the right or the left, as well as in the middle, which was obviously news to his new signing.
Keane clearly became unhappy very quickly with how Benetiz used him and relations soon broke down. While Keane made the poor decision to go to Anfield in the first place he was treated badly; after scoring a cracking goal away at Arsenal in a 1-1 draw he was then dropped from the squad in the next game, and his starts became rarer. It was said that Benetiz didn’t really want him, although all his comments on the Liverpool website and in the press about Keane when he was still a Tottenham player, clear attempts to unsettle him, suggested otherwise.
Had Keane stayed, Spurs would in all probability not have had the bad start they did to 2008-09 season, as eight new players at the club were struggling to come to terms with the pressure at White Hart Lane, leading to two points in eight games.
In the following January, Harry Redknapp, now the new Spurs manager, bought Keane back to the club on the last day of the transfer window, after another of the clubs re-signings, Jermain Defoe, got injured. (The reasons for Redknapp’s other re-signing that month, Pascal Chimbonda, will probably remain a mystery never to be solved).
The re-signing of Keane was understandable; though a different player than Defoe, both Harry Redknapp and Jamie Redknapp were critical of Benetiz’s handling of him, and the actual transfer fees meant Spurs had made a tidy little profit, almost an example of short-selling on players.
Keane though, was not the same player that left. He showed glimpses of his ability, notably in an assured performance in a midweek game at home to Stoke shortly after he returned, but failed to fully recapture his form. Redknapp started the following season with Defoe and Keane as his first choice pairing, a partnership that was never given enough time under Martin Jol, when both players were at their best. They combined well at times in that first spell, Defoe crossing well from the right, while Keane’s movement in the box could lead to a first time finish. But in their second spell, though it flourished in an excellent team performance at Hull, Keane’s best days were behind him.
New summer signing Peter Crouch emerged with a wonderfully effective performance from the substitutes bench at home to Birmingham on the fourth game of the season as Spurs were top of the league, and the was general astonishment when Keane retained his place against Burnley at the expense of Crouch in the next home game. As it turned out, Keane got four goals, to add to much better hat-tricks he scored at home to Wolves and Everton in his first spell. But it was a one-off.
His confidence had largely been shot. Even more than before he was holding on to the ball longer than he should when he could release players; he hesitated when he had shooting opportunities, and gradually became largely ineffective. Also, and perhaps crucially, he had lost the goodwill of those of us that pay to go and see Spurs week-in, week-out. Had he been playing well and scoring goals, he would have overcome any negativity regarding his desertion, as well as Redknapp’s dissatisfaction about an unauthorised beano in Dublin. But he failed to consistently perform on the pitch.
But recent memories shouldn’t cloud his overall contribution to our history. He may have become a shadow of himself as a player, and we will never know what would have happened if he had showed a bit of loyalty, and turned Liverpool down. (He is now another of a number of players who have left Tottenham in recent years to find that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.)
Interspersed with loan spells at West Ham and Celtic, he scored a further fifteen goals for Spurs in his second spell, and he is likely to remain as one of the top ten goalscorers in the club’s history for sometime to come. If, as reported, he joins the MLS, no doubt he will enjoy his time in LA; I’m sure I remember reading Galaxy was his favourite chocolate bar as a boy. Wherever he sees his last days out as a player though, he will always be a Spur as a man.
MG
MG
 |
| My e-book on Tottenham Hotspur's return to the European Cup for the first time in 49 seasons is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. |
